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Permaculture: Application of systems-thinking design methodology to arrive at regenerative outcomes
Permaculture started as a design system for creating ecological agricultural systems, recognising that natural systems autonomously produce a steady supply of useful resources when allowed to develop a natural state of balance. Permaculture emerged as a way of designing a landscape to best imitate this ecological balance within productive agricultural systems. However the systems thinking framework behind permaculture is a progressive and adaptable tool to apply to a wide range of systems from how you craft your life to how you build a city.
In this Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course we investigate how a systems-thinking approach can be applied to a permaculture design methodology to create health-promoting and resilient systems. I call these regenerative systems.
In other words: we explore how you can make sense of the complexity of a system and modify it in ways that restore it to good health, produce a good range of useful resources and ensure it is well-aligned to the environment in which it is positioned.
This system could be a farm , your body, the relationships you have, financial, a business, a community, a housing project, a house, a glasshouse, a pond etc etc.
The systems-thinking process explored in the PDC is a process where:
The main two parts of this process are an awareness of patterns and principles aligned to promoting healthy outcomes and the design methodology applied to develop systems, obtain feedback, refine systems and manage them in ways aligned to promoting healthy function and resiliency within that system.
The two main elements explored within this PDC are and identifying patterns common to systems that show health and resiliency and developing principles to focus efforts towards creating these systems and applying a design methodology to creating a system aligned to these characteristics.
The first “systems-thinking” section provides the foundation of what to look for in developing a regenerative system and all people enrolled in the PDC complete this section. Each topic covered in this section are supported by a range of online resources (ebooks, articles, and video resources) to help you explore and understand the main concepts relevant to that topic and a series of online tasks to consolidate and apply your understanding and benefit from the thoughts of others enrolled in the course. The topics covered in this section are:
Within the second “regenerative design” section you get to choose which type of system you would like to develop and are guided through understanding the background context of this type of system and are walked through the stages of creating a design project to come up with a detailed plan for creating your system. The topics explored in this section are:
Information and enrollment inquiries can be directed to ricard@agrifutures.co.nz
Permaculture started as a design system for creating ecological agricultural systems, recognising that natural systems autonomously produce a steady supply of useful resources when allowed to develop a natural state of balance. Permaculture emerged as a way of designing a landscape to best imitate this ecological balance within productive agricultural systems. However the systems thinking framework behind permaculture is a progressive and adaptable tool to apply to a wide range of systems from how you craft your life to how you build a city.
In this Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course we investigate how a systems-thinking approach can be applied to a permaculture design methodology to create health-promoting and resilient systems. I call these regenerative systems.
In other words: we explore how you can make sense of the complexity of a system and modify it in ways that restore it to good health, produce a good range of useful resources and ensure it is well-aligned to the environment in which it is positioned.
This system could be a farm , your body, the relationships you have, financial, a business, a community, a housing project, a house, a glasshouse, a pond etc etc.
The systems-thinking process explored in the PDC is a process where:
- Information about the environment in which the system will be developed is obtained.
- Strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of that environment are identified.
- The goals, values and resources of the creative agent (or agents) that are going to manipulate the factors within that environment to create a productive system are identified.
- Alignments are identified between capabilities of the creative agent and opportunities within the environment.
- A small range of potential alignments are developed as prototypes to a minimal viable level and stress-tested for feedback from the environment and impact on the creative agent.
- Feedback is reflected upon on the basis of the awareness of patterns that will lead to positive outcomes aligned to promoting better health and becoming self-reinforcing.
- The most promising prototypes are further refined and developed as productive systems.
- Opportunities are sought to create beneficial alignment between the systems created and other systems to create synergistic outcomes that will result in promoting greater health and resiliency within the systems, for the creative agent and for the environment in which those systems are positioned.
- Initial developmental and inquiry focused stages, shift to modification and refinement on the basis of broader and deeper feedback filtered through an awareness of underlying principles aligned to creating greater levels of health and resiliency of that system.
The main two parts of this process are an awareness of patterns and principles aligned to promoting healthy outcomes and the design methodology applied to develop systems, obtain feedback, refine systems and manage them in ways aligned to promoting healthy function and resiliency within that system.
The two main elements explored within this PDC are and identifying patterns common to systems that show health and resiliency and developing principles to focus efforts towards creating these systems and applying a design methodology to creating a system aligned to these characteristics.
The first “systems-thinking” section provides the foundation of what to look for in developing a regenerative system and all people enrolled in the PDC complete this section. Each topic covered in this section are supported by a range of online resources (ebooks, articles, and video resources) to help you explore and understand the main concepts relevant to that topic and a series of online tasks to consolidate and apply your understanding and benefit from the thoughts of others enrolled in the course. The topics covered in this section are:
- Background of permaculture
- Pattern recognition
- Principles of permaculture
- Applying ecological design
- Creating regenerative systems
Within the second “regenerative design” section you get to choose which type of system you would like to develop and are guided through understanding the background context of this type of system and are walked through the stages of creating a design project to come up with a detailed plan for creating your system. The topics explored in this section are:
- Environmental analysis
- The creative agent
- Identifying opportunities
- Developing a prototype
- Managing for a critical yield
Information and enrollment inquiries can be directed to ricard@agrifutures.co.nz
History of Permaculture
The term permaculture, meaning "permanent agriculture" was coined in the 1970's by two Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren working jointly at the Environmental Design School in Tasmania on developing a systems-thinking approach to developing a model of sustainable agriculture.
The original focus of permaculture was developing a beneficial assembly of plants and animals in relation to human settlements, mostly aimed towards household and community self reliance, and perhaps as a "commercial endeavor" only arising from a surplus from the system.
This original focus has broadened to encompass more aspects of social permaculture, business structures, strategies to acquire land and as a systems thinking tool that can applied to strengthen a wide variety of endeavors.
"Permaculture (Permanent Agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of cultivated ecosystems which have the diversity, stability & resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape, people & appropriate technologies, providing good, shelter, energy & other needs in a sustainable way. Permaculture is a philosophy and an approach to land use which works with natural rhythms & patterns, weaving together the elements of micro climate, annual & perennial plants, animals, water & soil management, & human needs into intricately connected & productive communities" - Bill Mollison
Permaculture is a design system that encompasses both "permanent agriculture" and "permanent culture." It recognizes, first, that all living systems are organized around energy flows. It teaches people to analyze existing energy flows (sun, rain, money, human energy) through such a system (a garden, a household, a business). Then it teaches them to position and interconnect all the elements in the system (whether existing or desired) in beneficial relationship to each other and to those energy flows. When correctly designed such a system will, like a natural ecosystem, become increasingly diverse and self-sustaining.
All permaculture design is based on three ethics: Care of the earth (because all living things have intrinsic worth); care of the people; and reinvest all surplus, whether it be information, money, or labor, to support the first two ethics.
A distinctive feature of permaculture designs is that each element included in a system has multiple benefits, that each resource is supplied in multiple ways for resiliency and that each element is inter-connected with other elements. In this way a permaculture design imitates some of the functional complexity found within an ecosystem and by so doing becomes more stables, requires less input and has a more diverse output that conventional agricultural systems.
The original focus of permaculture was developing a beneficial assembly of plants and animals in relation to human settlements, mostly aimed towards household and community self reliance, and perhaps as a "commercial endeavor" only arising from a surplus from the system.
This original focus has broadened to encompass more aspects of social permaculture, business structures, strategies to acquire land and as a systems thinking tool that can applied to strengthen a wide variety of endeavors.
"Permaculture (Permanent Agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of cultivated ecosystems which have the diversity, stability & resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape, people & appropriate technologies, providing good, shelter, energy & other needs in a sustainable way. Permaculture is a philosophy and an approach to land use which works with natural rhythms & patterns, weaving together the elements of micro climate, annual & perennial plants, animals, water & soil management, & human needs into intricately connected & productive communities" - Bill Mollison
Permaculture is a design system that encompasses both "permanent agriculture" and "permanent culture." It recognizes, first, that all living systems are organized around energy flows. It teaches people to analyze existing energy flows (sun, rain, money, human energy) through such a system (a garden, a household, a business). Then it teaches them to position and interconnect all the elements in the system (whether existing or desired) in beneficial relationship to each other and to those energy flows. When correctly designed such a system will, like a natural ecosystem, become increasingly diverse and self-sustaining.
All permaculture design is based on three ethics: Care of the earth (because all living things have intrinsic worth); care of the people; and reinvest all surplus, whether it be information, money, or labor, to support the first two ethics.
A distinctive feature of permaculture designs is that each element included in a system has multiple benefits, that each resource is supplied in multiple ways for resiliency and that each element is inter-connected with other elements. In this way a permaculture design imitates some of the functional complexity found within an ecosystem and by so doing becomes more stables, requires less input and has a more diverse output that conventional agricultural systems.
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David Holmgren
David Holmgren was born in Fremantle, Western Australia in 1955. He joined the Environmental Design School in Hobart, Tasmania in 1973, where he met Bill Mollison, who was then a lecturer at the University of Tasmania. Holmgren started writing a thesis on sustainable agriculture and, with additions from Mollison, this text became the legendary book Permaculture One, published in 1978. Holmgren has gone on to establish his own permaculture settlement at Melliodora and the larger eco-village of Fryers Forest. He works as a permaculture consultant, author and trainer.
The publication in December 2002 of the book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability saw deeper and more accessible structures insight into the formative ideas behind permaculture design. Principles and Pathways offers twelve key permaculture design principles, each explained in separate chapters. It is regarded as a major landmark in permaculture literature, especially as the seminal work, Bill Mollison's Permaculture: A Designer's Manual (1988) was published fifteen years previously and has never been revised. These principles of permaculture now provide a way to navigate permaculture designs and a checklist to refer to in our efforts to improve our thinking around what it means to create permaculture designs. |
Bruce Charles "Bill" Mollison (1928 – 24 September, 2016)
Bruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison was born in 1928 in Stanley, Tasmania, Australia. He claims to have spent his life up to the age of 28 as “living in the bush or on the sea”, hunting or fishing. He became a scientist with the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Tasmanian Inland Fisheries Department. He began teaching at the University of Tasmania in 1968 where he met David Holmgren. He started lecturing on Permaculture in 1976 and, following Permaculture One’s publication, he resigned his position in 1979 to develop and teach practical permaculture courses full time. He received the Right Livelihood Award in 1981.
Mollison founded The Permaculture Institute in Tasmania, and created the education system to train others under the umbrella of permaculture. This education system of "train the trainer", utilized through a formal Permaculture Design Course and Certification (PDC), has taught thousands of people throughout the world how to grow food and be sustainable using permaculture design principles. Today a permaculture design certificate is seen as the formative grounding in permaculture thinking to help develop a lens to see creative solutions to the worlds problems. |
"Permaculture is a creative design process based on whole-systems thinking informed by ethics and design principles.
This approach guides us to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature and can be applied to all aspects of human habitation, from agriculture to ecological building, from appropriate technology to education and even economics.
By adopting the ethics and applying these principles in our daily life we can make the transition from being dependent consumers to becoming responsible producers. This journey builds skills and resilience at home and in our local communities that will help us prepare for an uncertain future with less available energy.
The techniques and strategies used to apply these principles vary widely depending on the location, climatic conditions and resources that are available. The methods may differ, but the foundations to this wholistic approach remain constant. By learning these principles you can acquire valuable thinking tools that help you become more resilient in an era of change." - David Holmgren.
This approach guides us to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature and can be applied to all aspects of human habitation, from agriculture to ecological building, from appropriate technology to education and even economics.
By adopting the ethics and applying these principles in our daily life we can make the transition from being dependent consumers to becoming responsible producers. This journey builds skills and resilience at home and in our local communities that will help us prepare for an uncertain future with less available energy.
The techniques and strategies used to apply these principles vary widely depending on the location, climatic conditions and resources that are available. The methods may differ, but the foundations to this wholistic approach remain constant. By learning these principles you can acquire valuable thinking tools that help you become more resilient in an era of change." - David Holmgren.
From the horse's mouth
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